Delaney Hall crisis worries both sides
By: Charles Stile
Political Stile
USA Today Network
..... Governor Mikie Sherrill didn't want the hunger-strike crisis at the immigrant detainee dungeon to spiral into the murder and mayhem of Minneapolis.
.....
But it's also clear that the once-combative Donald Trump administration wasn't eager for another prime-time firestorm as tensions rose at Delaney Hall over the past 10days. The last such disaster - in Minneapolis this winter [2026] - didn't work out well. Trump's Immigration and Customs Enforcement targeting of the Minnesota city ended in a withdrawal that left the administraiton's credibility in a shambles and public support for trump's headline immigration polices plummeting. It has contributed to the president's woeful approval ratings. Now, as chaos swirls at Delaney Hall, Trump can't afford to have those rating tumble further before the midterms.
..... So the crisis on Doremus Avenue in Newark went form a simmer to a boil and back to a simmer again by Monday, June 1. [2026] It may very well be that these two political foes - a Democratic governor who railed against Trump in her campaign last year [2025] and a president who forever rails at Democrats as "radical socialists" and "sanctuary state politicians" - have differing motives to deescalate.
..... Sherrill is motivated by the recent past. Trump and his team have their eyes on the future - any more slide in his woeful approval ratings could spell further disaster for Republican candidates struggling to survive in swing districts with Trump already joined at there hips. With Newark teetering toward chaos, Sherill made no secret of her determination not to see a reports of Alex Pretti or Renee Good lying in pools of blood after being shot by federal agents.
..... While a hunger and labor strike inside Delaney Hall smoldered into a crisis, as reports of unsanitary and worm-infested food and pregnant mothers uncertain about their natal care grabbed headlines and after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unloaded pepper-spray pellets on U.S. Senator Andy Kim, Sherrill took action. She sent in the cavalry.
..... "We do not want to give ICE any excuse to get on the streets of New Jersey," she explained to the Rev. Al Sharpton in an interview after she deployed the New Jersey State Police,with shields and on horses, to secure the area around Delaney Hall with checkpoints and protest zones. "We've seen how badly they do things in other states, up to and including killing American citizens. So that's when we rally had state police reach out and said they were going to take over the security situation there at Delaney Hall."
...... Sherrill may have believed that this nip-in-the-bud approach would pay off with calm in the ling run. but in the short run, the protesters who confronted masked ICE agents over the weekend [05/30-31/2026] found themselves staring at New Jersey state troopers behind shields who were reportedly rewounding up protesters or "ketting" them into bunches that provided little escape.
..... Sherrill also lashed out at "people coming from out of state" who she suggested were flocking to Newark "to create chaos and dangerous situations." did that apply to those protesting against the conditions at Delaney Hall or just right-wing, pro-MAGA counter-protesters? The U.S. Navy helicopter pilot was running into flak on her left flank.
..... Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who imposed an overnight curfew after clashes with CE agents ave way to clashes with the state police, said he supported Sherrill's attempt to restore order before it speed out of control. Still, Baraka criticized some of the state police's aggressive tactics, saying they effectively became a continuation of the ICE tactics that had accelerated last week's [05/25-30/2026] violence.
..... "I mean, clearly I agree that she was supposed to take action, 100%. she's the governor. She's the leader of this state's Baraka said. "We're going to defer to her, beaus she is the leader of this state, and she needed to make strong and aggressive decisions."
..... But he continued, "What I disagree with is the tactics that were employed by the state police when they got here for that various situation. Look, the state police is a sword. If you're going to use them, you have to expect people to get cut ... and I just think that we, going forward, have to have larger discussions about tactics on the ground."
..... Baraka lifted the curfew on the night of June 2. [2026]
He also announced plans to expand a lawsuit against the GEO Group, the private operator of Delaney Hall, in hopes of closing the facility.
..... Meanwhile, Trump-world seemed to be echoing the same brash, combative swagger it first brought to Minneapolis before the shootings. Markwayne Mullin, the recently installed secretary of Homeland Security, threated to halt international flights into Newark Liberty International Airport if the demonstrations continued to brew at Delaney Hall. He said he would've to redeploy airport customs officials to bolster security at the center, a stance that was clearly designed to cerate a ripple of fear before the state of the World Cup matches at the Meadowlands.
..... Mullin also trolled with a sneer when pressed about the detainees served frozen food and worm-mottled meals and other complaints.
.....
"Well, they can go back to their country and get whatever food they want," he said last week. [05/28/2026] "the fact is, we're giving them the calories they want. This isn't Holiday Inn." But after Sherrill sent in the state police, Mullin pivoted to restrained praise.
..... "Thank you @NJSP for cooperating with @DHSgov law enforcement to keep the public safe," he posted on X on Saturday. [05/30/2026] This was far from a peace declaration - Mullin continue to talk the company line about rounding up dangerous criminals when most independent analyses show that most detainees do not have criminal records - all while he continued to defend his airport closure scheme.
Mullin affirms partnership
..... But although he said Monday [06/01/2026] that he still has a "plan in place" to deploy airport security workers if needed to secure Delaney, Mullin said there was no need to do that as long as the "partnership" with the state and Newark officials continued.
..... Yet it was a marked departure from the never give-in Trump administration posturing of the past. To some observes, it flows form Trump's grudging concession after Minneapolis that he simply went too far. he ditched Kristi Noem, Mullin's predecessor, and Greg Bovino, the swaggering Border Patrol leader, was banished as Homeland Security withdrew its forces.
..... Trump "made some significant changes in Homeland Security pretty quick," said Matthew Hale, an associate professor of political science at Seton Hall University. "He doesn't seem to care much about what most of the public has to say most of the time, but that was one time where he definitely listened."
.....
This doesn't mean that Trump administration stalwarts - particularly White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller - have called off their ethnic cleansing crusade of mass deportation of mostly Latino immigrants. Over the past year, [2025] according to an analysis published last week [05/29/2026] by The New York Times, the Trump administration has sued every bureaucratic measures at its disposal to harass migrants and urge them to self-deport. They include denying federal child care credits to children if one or more their parents are not citizens, refusing commercial driver's licenses and restricting standard of asylum seekers. The report found that the changes prompted an estimated 116,000 to self-deport.
..... Denying decent food and sanitary conditions, restricting visits to detainees, making them wait weeks and sometimes longer for a resolution to their detention cases - these are all part of that grand scheme.
..... What we have to understand, as elected officials and activists, is that we can't have the attention turn to the escalation that's gong on outside and away from what's happening inside the property," Baraka said.